not true!
Ofline working is becoming more prominent. It is particularly useful with database servers.
You get a "copy" of whatever data you need (normally in XML format) do whatever you need to do to it (sort, re-query, edit and delete). Then when your finished you connect and commit the changes.
The benift is, the main server is not taking up resources while your working on the data. It can do other things. This method is also called "disconnected" working (which is the same thing as offline).
More and more services are moving to this way of communicating.
If your offline (working with local copies) your not eating up bandwidth to stare at something, making it cheaper to run.